Voyager 1 Keeps Coasting Toward a Light-Day Milestone

Voyager 1, launched in 1977, remains the fastest and most distant human-made object, cruising at about 17 km/s with no engine. It has crossed the heliopause into interstellar space and sits roughly 25 billion kilometers from the Sun (about 170 AU). NASA expects it to reach about one light-day from Earth by November 2026, a distance at which light takes a day to reach Voyager and come back. Power is fading—from an initial ~470 watts to well under half—so engineers are shutting instruments offline; only two remain as the team plans further power-saving steps. When power runs out, Voyager 1 will go quiet but continue coasting for thousands of years, not aimed at any particular star (in ~40,000 years it will pass about 1.6 light-years from Gliese 445).